Family Portrait
by Kentra02
Summary: 9 year old Wufei is living in a bad family environment.... angst, abuse, violence, AU~TBc
1. Again

Warnings: AU ~ Angst ~ Violence ~ Abuse  
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing--yada yada yada-- I don't own the song "Family Portrait", it's Pink's and she can do whatever she want with it. She can stick it up her ass or someone else's for all I care, but it's my favorite song, and it cultivated ideas in my brainwashed mind. I'm using it. Not claiming it. 'Nuff said.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
Family Portrait  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
~Daddy please stop yelling,  
I can't stand the sound,  
Make Momma stop crying,  
'Cause I need you around.  
My Momma, she loves you,  
No matter what she says, it's true,  
I know that she hurt you,  
But remember, I love you too.~  
  
  
"I don't care if you're sorry! You screwed me over again! Can't you see things are getting so hard?"  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
"Get out of my damn life!"  
  
//No! Not again!// Wufei's mind was screaming, //Make them stop!//  
  
"Fine, I will!" shouted a man's voice. A door slammed, hard enough that a book fell off of Wufei's top shelf. He pressed his face deeper into his pillow and reprimanded himself as tears began spilling out from beneath his clenched eyelids. Backgrounding his own sobs, his mother's heaving cries rang inside of his ears. He sighed as he slowly pushed himself up from his raggedly clothed mattress. He turned the loose rattling doorknob and brought his head slowly out into the upstairs hallway. He combed his chin length black hair behind his ear with his fingers and tried to make his face appear less flustered from tears. He brought his nine year old body around the broken mess in the upstairs hallway, carefully maneuvering his small bare toes around discarded towels, clothes, broken glass; everything was a mess. Nobody cleaned anything up; it always ended up getting thrown on the floor again anyways. A short, very thin woman knelt at the bottom of the stairs, head against the wall, forceful sobbing shaking her small body. Her hair lay in disarray and a sizeable bruise marred her left forearm. Wufei stood next to the kneeling figure, and reached out to touch his mother's shoulder. She flinched at the contact, Wufei noted as he sharply retracted his unwelcome touch.  
  
"Momma?"  
  
She looked at him, eyes filled with anger as she pushed away a crystalline tear from her chin, where it had abruptly stopped its course and come to rest. He looked so much like his father...that bastard of a man who was leaving them here. Alone. Leaving them unprotected.   
  
"Daddy's gone again, isn't he." Wufei struggled to keep his voice steady. Steady. Far from what he was feeling now.   
  
"Don't mess with things that don't concern you," she voiced icily, picking up her body from the floor, a job done with more effort than it should have taken.   
  
"It is my concern," he returned just as icily, "What happened this time?"   
  
His mother walked past him, headed towards the couch in the living room.  
  
"Didn't I tell you to stay out of it?" She said forcefully, and gave him a rough push, sending his back to meet an old broken cabinet. The cabinet door fell in, it's rattling hinges finally giving way as it should have done long ago. There wasn't much in the house that was new. Most of it was old and used. And broken. His mother was young; she didn't have a job to afford new things. She had never had a chance to attend college because she had bore Wufei so early, and his dad was never around much to support him, though they suspected he had more money then he let on.  
  
Wufei brushed himself off, his hand resting on his bruising elbow. He gave up on trying to find out what happened. It didn't matter much; his father would be back, sooner or later. Right now, there were too many more things to worry about. Wufei walked over to his mother, now lying on the couch, to attempt to get her to speak to him in a civilized way.  
  
"Momma, what are we going to eat?"  
  
She didn't have a car, and there was no food left in the house. Not to mention, she didn't have the money to buy food if she did have a car. Wufei's last meal had been over two days ago.   
  
"Go away, 'Fei," she said turning over on the couch so she wouldn't have to meet his hungry eyes, and his starving small body.  
  
"Momma, I'm so hungry..."  
  
"Then go make something," she replied flatly.  
  
"You know that we don't have anything."  
  
Silence. Wufei accepted that he wasn't going to receive any reply from the thin women....Was she really a women, or merely a child? She wasn't really more then a child at 21 years old, taking care of a 9 year old by herself.  
  
The silence was broken as his stomach erupted with the force of a long suppressed growl. His mother dismissed the sound, uncaring, or too troubled in her own mind to notice. 


	2. Breathe

Family Portrait   
Part Two: Breathe  
  
~Momma, please stop crying,  
I can't stand the sound,  
You're pain is painful and it's tearin' me down,  
I hear glasses breakin'  
As I sit up in my bed,  
I told Dad you didn't mean those   
nasty things you said~  
  
  
"No!" He screamed as he jolted upright, relieved to be free from the darkness of his dreams, even if only to be delivered into the darkness of his own bedroom. Wufei glanced at red glowing numbers as he struggled to free himself from his tangled bed sheets. 3:45 a.m. He stood up on the cold wooden floor and shivered, noting that his pajama bottoms hovered inches above his ankles. He knew they would suffice, they would have to, whether he liked it or not. He couldn't even afford a meal; money wasn't going to be wasted on trivial items such as new pajamas. Sleeping nude would be fine if only he could get something to eat.  
  
Wufei sighed. The nightmares had been continuously getting worse. This one had been no exception. He realized that wet streaks marked his cheeks, a sign of the haunting dreams.   
  
//I suppose the hunger is finally getting to me.//  
  
He shivered again, relieved that excuses for his problems had not run out. Though he was remarkably strong for a nine year old, he could not admit his problems to himself. He knew that he would keep running from himself all of his life, but he couldn't accept the fact that his problems were taking him over.   
  
His ears perked, realizing for the first time in days, nobody was fighting downstairs. Then the memories from the previous evening washed over him, flooding him as if he was physically under water in his swimming mind. Daddy had left again.  
  
//I can't believe he's gone again. Doesn't he get it? Me and Momma won't survive!//  
  
Though voices couldn't be heard tonight, Wufei's sensitive ears sensed another sound. His ears were well trained as he had spend most of his life hiding and listening, whether it be crouching as one with the shadows behind the television, or standing ears pressed against walls, he had always heard. The sound downstairs...what was it? He left his door slightly ajar and stood at the top of the stairs, small black eyes searching the darkness of the house surrounding him. Or at least what he could see of it. He automatically noticed that the sound was coming from the kitchen. Catlike, he crept down the stairs, crouching beneath the wooden rails as he plodded in silence. He crept through the living room, seeing finally, his mother, her head hanging over the kitchen sink, arms supporting her shaking body.   
  
Wufei got down on all fours and crawled behind the kitchen counter to watch her. He quickly noticed though, that she wasn't crying, she was vomiting. Only...there was no food in her body for her stomach to dispel. So what was her body rejecting? Wufei watched in some mixture of horror and confusion as she plunged three fingers into her throat, watched as her body heaved forward, muscles quivering in a losing struggle to support their body. He watched as she did this again and again, until his mother's sobs and heavings could not be distinguished. And then Wufei couldn't stand it anymore.  
  
"Stop!" he yelled, standing up from behind the counter with a sudden burst of intrepidity. She spun around, trying to calm her body, while the same body began shaking with rage.  
  
"How long were you there, boy?" she growled, eyes growing wide out of either fury or fear -- or perhaps both.  
  
"Long enough," his quick mind expelled from his tongue.  
  
"You son of a bitch," she snapped, "Why the hell were you watching me?"  
  
"Why the hell were you throwing up?" he retorted, "It's not going to do you anymore good than our current situation that we're in, anyways. Daddy is gone and you--" his voice faltered, "You can't leave me too."  
  
She looked at him, and let go of his fragile shoulder. He was just a kid. He couldn't understand. She rested her elbows on the kitchen counter top and rested her forehead in them, leaning, still a bit shaky. It hurt her to see her son, stomach growling, shaking, he would be better off on the streets. Or with his damn father, wherever he had always run off to.  
  
" 'Fei, go back to bed."  
  
He crossed his arms, signifying that he wouldn't leave until she did. His mother sighed.  
  
"Yes, 'Fei, I'm going too, see?"  
  
Wufei nodded and waited until his mother departed into the lonely silence of the dark hallway. Giving up on her, he walked across the kitchen to the evidently empty refrigerator. Pulling the handle open hopefully, he gazed into the bareness as the tiny light spilled out in pools and shadows over the floor of the room. He rested his head against the door of the freezer on top, as he continued to stare, as if food would magically appear within. After remaining that way for minutes, he gave in. Feeling defeated, he retired to his bedroom to fight off another sleepless night. 


End file.
